


The Tale of Bone-a-saurus Rex (And Chuck)

by SherlockMalfoy



Series: Grid Links [8]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Zeo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background information, Fluff, Keepsake, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 04:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14464545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockMalfoy/pseuds/SherlockMalfoy
Summary: "Jason!""You kept Bone-a-saurus!""Of course I did."Just what is the story behind that secret switch to the entrance of the Lair in Tommy's house anyway?(Grid Links one-shot about some model skeletons and the long-suffering Ranger who built them.)





	The Tale of Bone-a-saurus Rex (And Chuck)

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little silly thing I wrote this morning after writing angst all night. Hope you like it!  
> The tale of bone-a-saurus is referenced by Jason twice in "Hang Up the Spandex".

"Tommy? Are you in here sweetie?" Mrs. Oliver called out as she entered the small hobby shop.

He shouldn't have waited until the last minute to replace the models. Then again, he should have known to use his teleporter instead of trying to carry the things to Jason's house. It was only a giant chunk of their grade for the semester and it wasn't like his entire future was riding on maintaining his GPA. And his friends were depending on him to take care of the extra credit portion of the project.

Sure, using his teleporter COULD have been seen as personal gain since he'd benefit from it but... was it really?

Yes, yes it was.

Tommy sighed. "Yeah mom, just a few more minutes!" he called back from aisle three as he tried to decide which models to buy. The other two, the first two, were hard wooden kits with snap together joins. Mentally he calculated how much money he had left from his allowance and... nope. Not enough to get the snap together kits.

Dejectedly, Tommy grabbed two kits from the shelf below them and as much super glue as he could afford. It was going to be a very long night.

**o0o**

As soon as he and his mother arrived home from the Angel Grove Mall, Tommy shut himself in his room and prayed the Machine Empire wouldn't send anything down for the Rangers to deal with for the rest of the day and night.

Of course, that wasn't the case. He was just about to put the finishing touches on the first model, a Brachiosaurus, when his communicator sounded off. He looked at the clock on the corner of his desk and groaned. He should be in bed. The monsters should be in bed. Everyone in their right mind should be in bed.

But of course, machines didn't need sleep. Tiredly, Tommy answered his communicator. After getting the gist of the situation he got up from his chair, locked his bedroom door, and teleported out in a flash of red.

**o0o**

They did it! The latest in a long line of ridiculously incompetent monsters was defeated! And it only took two hours.

By the time he teleported back into his bedroom it was nearing two-thirty in the morning. And there was still the unopened second model kit to deal with.

Tommy wasn't one to drink a lot of sodas or even coffee. They weren't good for the body. But just this once... the exhausted teen made an exception. He couldn't let his friends down.

With three cold cans of soda sitting to the side on his desk, he sat down and opened the second kit. After taking a few minutes to study the diagram as carefully as his tired eyes would allow, he started organizing the pieces into sections for a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

**o0o**

His alarm went off and his hand came out to slap it, smashing the snooze button.

This happened four times before his mother opened the door to check on him. "Tommy, you need to get up."

He grumbled in his sleep.

She tutted and sighed, shaking her head. "Every morning with you..." After a few moments in the doorway, she tried again, her voice a bit louder and rather firm. " _Thomas Franklin Oliver!_ " She watched as he shot up, fell back in his chair, and groaned on the floor.

"Mom," he moaned, drawing out the word with a whine. "What was that for?"

"Get up or you'll be late again."

"What time is it?"

"Seven thirty. Doesn't school start at eight?"

He scrambled to his feet, frantically searching his room for his book-bag. She left him to it.

"Every morning... I swear," his mother said to herself as she went back downstairs. "If it weren't for all the monster alarms he'd probably sleep for a week if I let him..."

By the time Tommy had changed, found his keys, lost his keys but found his wallet, lost his wallet but found his keys, then found his wallet and was half-way to school he realized he'd forgotten something pretty important. "Crap.... the models."

He continued on to school. He'd have to go straight home afterwards to get them before meeting the gang at the Youth Center to work on their project.

**o0o**

"So far so good," Tommy said to himself. No monster attacks. No fights. He just needed to run up, grab the models, and hop back in his truck.

He was through the foyer and at the foot of the stairs when heard a voice call out to him.

"Oh... hey uncle John!"

For the next fifteen minutes his mom and uncle kept him captive with conversation before his uncle asked him to drive out to his cabin at the lake to have a look around for him. He'd let a friend use it last weekend and wanted to make sure it was left as good as they found it. Unfortunately, John was needed at the garage and didn't have the time.

Tommy was there and back again in an hour. Stopped long enough to help his mom with some extra laundry, and was halfway to the Youth Center when...

"Cogs. It had to be Cogs... Why today?..." Tommy mumbled when the mechanical monstrosities first appeared.

Exhausted, sleep deprived, and just plain frustrated... when he arrived at the Youth Center he was three hours late, his friends had nearly finished the tri-board for their presentation and half the interactive portion of the bonus points project when Jason asked...

"Hey Tommy, weren't you in charge of the models?"

Head, meet table.

**o0o**

The following day, after one heck of a battle downtown that nearly made them all late, Tommy remembered to bring Chuck the Brachiosaurus and Bone-a-saurus Rex with him to the science fair. Unfortunately, the bottom jawbone of Bone-a-saurus kept falling off because he didn't have enough glue by the time he finished with all the teeth to secure it properly.

Rocky took one of Kat's hair-clips, broke it apart and borrowed some glue to put a hinge in. "See," he said proudly. "Now he can eat stuff!"

They got third place. And all received extra credit for the addition of a miniature excavation they had set up with two dish pans, sand, and parts of other dinosaur model kits.

"Those aren't the ones Adam bought," Jason said to him sometime later that afternoon. "What happened bro?"

"The day I was supposed to bring them over?"

"Yeah?"

"Cogs. So I went with mom to the mall to buy replacements buy I couldn't afford the other ones."

"No wonder you were so tired yesterday man. You should have called me. I would have come over to help." After a few minutes, watching some kids digging in the sand filled dish pans, Jason laughed. "So, Chuck and Bone-a-saurus?"

"After you've spent nine hours gluing tiny little pieces together and having to pry little plastic teeth off the side of your hand because you've glued yourself to them, you kind of start to feeling like you have to name them."

" **Bone-a-saurus**?"

"Look here, Rex... you try coming up with a name at four in the morning when all you want to do is set the thing on fire."

Jason tried not to laugh. "Okay Christmas, you've made your point," he said. "Still, you should have used your communicator. Or the phone. It's not like I have to fly across an ocean to get to your house anymore."

**o0o**

They staggered into the dimly lit bedroom, hands clumsily yanking at clothing and limbs as the two young men exchanged sloppy drunken kisses.

Tommy tripped backwards, landing on the bed with a hiss as the waist of his khakis rubbed against the still stinging red mark on his skin. He didn't have time to give it any more thought than that as calloused fingers tugged at his shirt again, threatening to rip it off him.

"Hey, hey, hold on," Tommy protested, pushing him back long enough so he could pull his shirt off over his head and toss it to the floor.

Jason took the opportunity to do the same, throwing his shirt somewhere behind him as he straddled his best friend's lap and dove in for more.

Neither would notice Jason's shirt had caught on Chuck the Brachiosaurus and knocked it into the floor until two days later when they would be sitting in the same room, completely sober and awkwardly trying to talk about feelings while not actually talking about their feelings.

**o0o**

They were sat in his bedroom. Stacks of boxes sitting in a corner marked 'college' while other boxes were stacked in another marked 'garage'. One group of them was significantly larger than the other. Tommy sat on the side of his bed, Kat beside him. Adam was in the floor with his back against the closet door, reading a martial arts magazine. Rocky sat in the chair at the desk, the only thing that was comfortable for him with his back still screwed up. He had the only surviving dinosaur model in his lap and playing with the improvised hinged jaw. He kept feeding it Skittles and watching them fall back into his waiting hand below.

The radio behind him played softly, Tanya's voice popping in every few songs. She couldn't get the day off from the station, but it was kind of like having her there.

"So this is it," Rocky said. "Time to grow up."

"I think we did plenty of growing up long before now," Adam said from the floor. "But yeah, I know what you mean. It's so weird not having powers anymore."

Tommy nodded. "You get used to it after a while."

"Says the guy that's had more than the rest of us."

"Hey, I never asked to be brought back on the team," he reminded his friends. "Just when I finally got used to it, Zordon reeled me back in."

Rocky shrugged. "Like Tommy said, you get used to it. Sort of."

"Yeah right. You're still technically a Ranger. You never gave Justin your Zeonizer."

"True. But the Power isn't doing me any favors with this back. I tell you, the only thing that makes physical therapy bearable is the cute therapist."

"She's not that cute," Adam mumbled, turning a page in the magazine.

"Not MY therapist. God she's... _**I'd rather kiss Rita!**_ " That got a laugh. "I meant the one that works with the kids on Tuesday and Thursday."

Adam's head snapped up then, catching Tommy's attention. As if realizing where he was though, Adam buried his face back in the magazine, trying for all the world not to look... Tommy wasn't sure exactly. But he was certain he recognized that look.

He glanced from Adam to Rocky and back again. Rocky still chattering away and oblivious as Adam seemed to hide behind his magazine.

If he hadn't had... whatever it was between him and Jason months ago, he wouldn't have recognized the hopeful little smile on his frog friend's face.

**o0o**

Bone-a-saurus Rex survived the trip across country to MIT and sat prominently on Tommy's desk in every dorm room he lived in. The hinged mouth came in handy when his roommates wanted to leave a note for him.

When he moved into a small apartment with his favorite classmate and new best friend Hayley, they would often make and put funny hats on him.

She asked him once, about seven or eight months after Kat had broken up with him, why he named it what he did. Tommy had shrugged, picked up his beer, and muttered incoherently.

"That's it," she said when she caught a familiar utterance. "You see this plane ticket? It's yours now."

"But your intervie-"

"Oh no, Tommy. You're going back home, you're taking a vacation, and I don't want to see your ugly face again until you've talked things out with this... this... Bone-a-saurus guy of yours." She took his bottle, poured it in the sink and started a very strong pot of coffee. "We've got six hours to sober you up before your flight."

"But Hayles!-"

"Don't Hayles me, Thomas. Every software company in corporate America is dying to get me in their office. I can always reschedule or find another one. But free vacation vouchers don't just fall out of the sky for everyone you know! You're going. You're going to have fun. And you're going to deal with.... whatever this mess is... before you come back."

Bone-a-saurus Rex watched on from his place atop the entertainment center, an envelope addressed to Tommy from Farkas Bulkmeier hanging out of it's mouth. A tiny red baseball hat sitting sideways on it's skull and a tiny pair of sunglasses perched on it's snout.

**o0o**

When Tommy moved back to California, not all of his boxes would fit in the apartment. So he made himself downsize and store some of his stuff at his parent's house. The T-Rex model didn't see daylight for a long time.

When he and Hayley bought the property for their lab after learning the area had a subterranean cave system that would be perfect for hiding the Dino gems and Hayley's projects, the box containing Bone-a-saurus was moved to the place out on Valencia Road.

He never got around to unpacking it until after Jason had helped move everything over the summer before he started teaching at Reefside High.

"We need something to hide the switch for the false floor," Hayley said, looking up at him after she had finished installing the panel. "You know, if you ever have someone over they don't accidentally hit the big red button."

Tommy looked around the study, then grinned as he crossed to the shelf to pick up his trusty false bone friend.

Hayley stared at him like he was mad. "Okay, I know we installed a jawbone switch on the hidden door downstairs but-"

"It's perfect! No one would suspect it," Tommy said. "Besides, who better to guard my biggest secret than my other biggest secret?"

"I'll have to adjust his jaw... drill a hole in the base for wiring..."

"Just make sure he stays in one piece. We've been through a lot together."

"Yeah... I'm sure it's seen more than it's fair share..." she said, taking the model and examining where she could modify it to suit their need.

**o0o**

On second thought...

Tommy realized how bad of an idea using Bone-a-saurus as the secret switch in his house that led to the Lair actually was.

But to be fair, it wasn't his fault his favorite dinosaur was the T-Rex. He had the first Red Ranger to blame for that.

It was ironic, then, that it was the Red Dino Ranger, the one who would control the Tyranozord, that had found the secret switch in his house.

**o0o**

"Wait wait wait... you named your zord Chuck?" Conner said, staring at Dr. O in disbelief. "I mean, what kind of a name is Chuck for something as awesome as the Brachiozord Carrier?"

"Like Lucy is any better?"

"What? I love my Tyranozord! And I Love Lucy is an iconic comedy starring an iconic red head! Red is my color. So it makes sense to call her Lucy."

Dr. O laughed. Conner glared at him indignantly. "What? It makes more sense than Chuck! What kind of a name is Chuck for a zord anyway!"

**o0o**

_"Jason!"_

_"You kept Bone-a-saurus!"_

_"Of course I did."_

_..._

_..._

_"I missed you."_

_"I missed you too, Jase."_


End file.
